Vigil
by bewize
Summary: [COMPLETE] Set on the eve of the Cell Games, Chi-chi ponders the implications of tomorrow's events.


A/N: Set the night before the Cell games

Warnings: Angst- please take that seriously

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Set on the eve of the Cell Games, Chi-chi considers the implications of tomorrow's events.

1Chi-chi stared at her sleeping son. She sat in his room, at his desk, and watched him sleep. It had been too long since she had seen him and her eyes couldn't stop their restless movements over his sleeping form, almost as if she were trying to carve him into her memory.

She skittered away from that thought and its implication, instead focusing on Gohan's face. He looked so tired. He looked different somehow. He hadn't been gone from her that long this last time. Just a short trip up to Kami's tower. A training exercise of some sort... but it had changed him.

She noticed the faint bruise on his cheek and felt the anger stir in her chest. He wasn't supposed to have to fight this hard. He was only a child. He was _her_ child. _She _was supposed to protect _him_; _she_ was supposed to be able to scare the monsters away; _she_ was supposed to teach him about the joy of life.

Instead, she found herself depending on him for protection. The monsters were too strong for her to fight. They weren't just imagined shadows in the closet anymore. How long ago had he realized that monsters were real?

She couldn't tear her eyes away from him. He was dreaming. She hoped it was a pleasant dream. She hoped that in sleep he could find the peace that she couldn't give him during the waking hours.

The clock chimed in the hallway and despite herself Chi-chi tensed. Only five more hours. Five hours until Goku took her son away. Would she see him again? Would she ever get the chance to try and make up for the childhood he had led? A grim look flitted across her face. Despite it all, her son hadn't had a childhood. She shouldn't delude herself.

She wanted to hate Goku for what he had done to their son. She should hate him for making Gohan want to fight; for teaching him how to fight; for forcing him to grow up to fast. She should blame her husband for this. But, she couldn't; she didn't. She understood the warrior's heart. She possessed one of her own. She didn't begrudge Goku for fighting, but she didn't want that life for Gohan.

Idly, she wondered if that made her a monster as well. No one understood her thoughts when it came to her son. Her father and Bulma only shook their heads and told her that she was being selfish. After all, Gohan had to fight. If he didn't fight, the world could end. Even Goku had blankly asked her if she really thought Gohan's studies were more important than the safety of the world.

Why did no one understand that the answer was yes? How could she make them understand that her child's happiness meant more to her than the world in its entirety? If she could take away the pain of the past years, if she could give him one single day of carefree childish innocence, where the weight of the world didn't press him down as it did now, she would do it and let the world fend for itself.

Where had she failed? Four years... she had held her son close to her for four years. Then she had lost him. With tears in her eyes, she remembered the way he had always come to her to kiss his "boo-boos" better. It was a mother's magic... to kiss "boo-boos" and make the pain go away. When had she lost it? When had the "boo-boos" gotten too big for her to soothe?

He had turned out so brave, so strong. But at what cost? When other children Gohan's age were playing with toys, he was learning survival. When other children his age cried because they were afraid of monsters under the bed, Gohan was crying because the monsters were killing the ones he loved and he wasn't strong enough to defeat them. When other children ran to their mothers because they had skinned their knees, Gohan was learning how to pick himself up from the dirt after much harder blows.

He was so young. He was too young to live under the strain that showed on his face, even when he was asleep.

He could die tomorrow. Chi-chi's heart rebelled against that knowledge, but she couldn't change it. She knew it; Goku knew it... Gohan knew it.

At what age had he learned that he couldn't stop death? At what age had he learned that the people you love the most sometimes leave you and there is nothing you can do about it? A five year old shouldn't know what death was. That thought replayed in her mind over and over again. But Gohan had known.

As confident as both he and Goku seemed, she suspected that it was an act. For her benefit or for theirs, she wasn't sure. Tonight, she was a wife and mother. Tomorrow... she could be alone. How would she bare it? How would she handle the possibility that she might have to bury her child?

Chime!

Four hours...


End file.
